Abstract
For a given physical duration, certain events can be experienced as subjectively longer in duration than others. Try this for yourself: take a quick glance at the second hand of a clock. Immediately, the tick will pause momentarily and appear to be longer than the subsequent ticks. Yet, they all last exactly 1 s. By and large, a deviant or an unexpected stimulus in a series of similar events (same duration, same features) can elicit a relative overestimation of subjective time (or “time dilation”) but, as is shown here, this is not always the case. We conducted an event-related functional magnetic neuroimaging study on the time dilation effect. Participants were presented with a series of five visual discs, all static and of equal duration (standards) except for the fourth one, a looming or a receding target. The duration of the target was systematically varied and participants judged whether it was shorter or longer than all other standards in the sequence. Subjective time dilation was observed for the looming stimulus but not for the receding one, which was estimated to be of equal duration to the standards. The neural activation for targets (looming and receding) contrasted with the standards revealed an increased activation of the anterior insula and of the anterior cingulate cortex. Contrasting the looming with the receding targets (i.e., capturing the time dilation effect proper) revealed a specific activation of cortical midline structures. The implication of midline structures in the time dilation illusion is here interpreted in the context of self-referential processes.
Highlights
The experience of subjective time flow changes continuously
Pre-functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) psychophysics The psychophysical results replicated prior findings: a temporal dilation effect was observed for LOOM but not for RECEDE targets as can be seen in Figure 2A
FMRI – psychophysics results On the basis of the pre-fMRI behavioral results, we selected the main contrast for the fMRI to be the LOOM vs. RECEDE targets
Summary
The experience of subjective time flow changes continuously. A classic dichotomy can illustrate this point: a given duration, say a minute, is not experientially invariant. When awaiting for something, or feeling bored or blue, time drags; when entertained or absorbed in skillful performance, time flies (i.e., we are hardly aware of the minutes passing by). The allocation of attention to time constitutes one major factor influencing whether the subjective flow of time will “speed up” or “slow down:” when attention is focused on time, perceived time slows down and experienced duration expands; when distracted away from it, it speeds up and duration contracts. Cognitive models of time perception account for the speeding up or slowing down of time passing by positing. Frontiers in Neuroscience www.frontiersin.org van Wassenhove et al. Mechanisms of subjective time dilation
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